Orson Hyde Confirms Father and Son "[resemble] each other exactly in features and stature."

 According to this site, “Orson Hyde wrote a treatise on the faith, doctrine, and history of the Church which he then translated and published in German. Hyde’s work was titled Ein Ruf aus der Wuste, which was the first time an account of the First Vision was published in a foreign language.” In his description of Joseph Smith First Vision, in 1842 Orson Hyde clarifies and integrates the 1832 and 1838 First Vision versions thus:

At this sacred moment, the natural world around him was excluded from his view, so that he would be open to the presentation of heavenly and spiritual things. Two glorious heavenly personages stood before him, resembling each other exactly in features and stature. They told him that his prayer had been answered and that the Lord had decided to grant him a special blessing. He was also told that he should not join any of the religious sects or denominations, because all of them erred in doctrine and none were recognized by God as his church and kingdom. …

The 1832 First Vision emphasizes Jesus only as Lord and Joseph Smith receives a forgiveness of sins. We see no contradiction with the 1838 account based on Hyde saying “They told him that his prayer had been answered and that the Lord had decided to grant him a special blessing.” This could be the blessing of a forgiveness of sins. Then Hyde says, “He [Christ] also told …” In Hyde’s version we then see what Joseph Smith may have meant by the 1832 account that only mentions Jesus, which is that because Jesus and God the Father “[resemble] each other exactly in features and stature” (as Hyde puts it). it is understandable that Joseph Smith would only mention Christ in the 1832 version, as seeing Christ was in his mind the same as seeing the Father, which is corroborated in John 14:8-9 (NKJV):

Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 

In other words, the Father and Son were nearly “identical twins” as a duplicate genome basically, which I discuss in my blog series here. 

The New Covenant of the Priesthood and Plural Marriage as the Means to the End of Raising Up a Righteous Seed (Peoplehood) and Generating Zion as a Circle of Friends

In my blog series here, I discuss gene-culture coevolution and argue that certain personalities and character traits were selected for during the 1800s when plural marriage (i.e. polygamy was practiced among Mormons). Thus there was a type of funneling process where difficult, disagreeable, and unfriendly types chose (and choose today) not to be part of the LDS fold; and so over time there was a filtering in of mostly happy, strong, agreeable and civilized type people into Mormonism, so that the early LDS polygamists unintentionally selectively bred a kind of quasi-ethnicity as a cultural identity that became known as the "Mormons."

In the book Joseph smith's Quorum of the Anointed, in the forward Todd Compton basically confirms what I think which is that the priesthood is in part connected to plural marriage which we see with Abraham 2:11, as Compton writes on pages 4-6 (emphasis added):

Foreword by Todd Compton 

This is an important book, documenting a key chapter in Latter-day Saint history that few Mormons know about. The Quorum of Anointed (also known as the Holy Order) was the secret, elite group which founding prophet Joseph Smith organized and to which he revealed for the first time the ordinances of washing and anointing, the endowment, and the “fullness of the priesthood”—the foundation of modern LDS temple ritual. …

… Joseph Smith undoubtedly stood at the center of things; around him revolved a number of social circles, many of them secret, that only occasionally intersected. There was the extremely secret inner circle of those who had been introduced to, and were beginning to practice, plural marriage; there was the Council of Fifty, the sub rosa political kingdom of the church, which would privately crown Joseph Smith king of the theocratic kingdom of God. … the women’s Relief Society, led by Emma Smith, who was generally an opponent of polygamy and did not know of many of her husband’s plural marriages; and her counselors, Elizabeth Whitney, the mother of one of Joseph’s wives, and Sarah Cleveland, herself a wife of Joseph. Finally, there was the circle documented in this book, the Holy Order, the Quorum of the Anointed, sometimes simply called the priesthood, intersecting with all these groups. …

… The editors of this volume suggest that the Quorum of the Anointed [again, “sometimes simply called the priesthood”], to which Joseph Smith introduced the LDS temple rites, was closely connected to his introduction of plural marriage to his most trusted disciples. The Quorum of the Anointed facilitated the teaching of secrecy; and Joseph’s polygamy, which could have had disastrous legal implications and caused adverse publicity if it became public knowledge, was one of the main reasons secrecy was needed. In addition, sometimes the reward of entering the quorum gave Mormons motivation for accepting polygamy.

Thus the priesthood was connected to plural marriage as the keys to raise up a righteous seed, seed meaning a Peoplehood (a Mormon People), just as Abraham's seed raised up the Israelites; and Jesus’ supernatural seed was implanted in multiple Brides/Christians who receive his divine sperma/DNA as pneuma (pronounced nooma). Thus, just as Jesus supernaturally seeded multiple brides (Christians), breeding a Christian People (i.e. the Jesus People), the priesthood is the Order of the Son of God (see D&C 107:3) as it is the order of seeding a People (see Abraham 2:11) which is ultimately a Circle of Friends: “... I [Christ] say unto you, my friends, for from henceforth I shall call you friends ..” (D&C 84:77; compare John 15:15). So after Christ repeatedly refers to LDS Christians as his friends in scripture, we then read about the greeting ritual of the LDS School of the Prophets in D&C 88 (emphasis added):

3 Wherefore, I [Christ] now send upon you another Comforter, even upon you my friends, that it may abide in your hearts, even the Holy Spirit of promise; ...

62 And again, verily I say unto you, my friends, I leave these sayings …

117 Therefore, verily I say unto you, my friends, call your solemn assembly, …

127 And again, the order of the house prepared for the presidency of the school of the prophets, established for their instruction in all things that are expedient for them, even for all the officers of the church, or in other words, those who are called to the ministry in the church, beginning at the high priests, even down to the deacons—

128 And this shall be the order of the house of the presidency of the school:

130 And when he cometh into the house of God, for he should be first in the house—behold, this is beautiful, that he may be an example—

131 Let him offer himself in prayer upon his knees before God, in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant.

132 And when any shall come in after him, let the teacher arise, and, with uplifted hands to heaven, yea, even directly, salute his brother or brethren with these words:

133 Art thou a brother or brethren? I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant, in which covenant I receive you to fellowship, in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever. Amen. 

In The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism: Joseph Smith's Unfinished Reformation, author Don Bradley argues that Joseph Smith was seeking to build a society of genuine friends bonded in friendship. One way to do this was through marriages between families through plural marriages where everyone is interconnected as sons in law and fathers in law and mothers in law and daughters in law, etc.; as a circle of friends seeking to build Zion by producing a righteous seed (a quasi-ethnic encultured Mormon People). This is why Don Bradley has recently argued as of 2023 (see this Ward Radio podcast episode  starting at the 15 minute mark), that new research reveals Joseph’s motivations for plural marriage had more to do with generating a circle of friends bonded together through celestial sealings: as in many cases he was plurally married to women who were already months into a pregnancy and about to give birth to another man's child, and in that culture in the 1800s pregnant women did not have sex; and thus those particular polyandrous plural marriages would have most likely been sexless marriage sealings for eternity only. So obviously there was a different motive for such sealings which Bradley discusses.

If we then consider the motivations for temple rituals like baptism for the dead which was ultimately about bonding the dead to the living as eternal friends and brothers/sisters in the celestial realm; just as Joseph saw in vision his deceased brother Alvin in heaven. So sealings of deceased fathers to sons, deceased siblings to siblings, generated a great Chain of Belonging.

Ex-Mormon Jonathan Streeter argues for the "Truth" of Mormonism by Seeing Religion as an Evolutionary Living Framework of Action, Ideals, Tradition and Heritage

 In the "TOTAS: Religion as an Evolutionary Living FAITH w/ Troy Leavitt" on YouTube, Jonathan Streeter and Troy Leavitt, basically discuss gene-culture coevolution at 25 minutes. They also discuss how studies show that religion does make most people healthier and happier in general.

At 35-38 minutes, host Jonathan Streeter comes to the same conclusions that I have, which is that from the perspective of gene-culture coevolution, it doesn't even matter if the ideas of a religion are objectively true or not; from a lifeward perspective, it is about ideas having evolutionarily and cultural usefulness in generating greater social cohesion and the unifying of the family and the tribe; so that the ideas are replicated into future generations and make the individual organism and the tribe more fit and reproductively successful and powerful. 

So after starting this blog series it was validating to see somebody else who spent over 10 years out of the LDS Church in the exmormon world, to then upon further scientific investigation and rational inquiry, came to realize that there is another way of assessing and valuing Mormonism: through the perspective of it being a cultural phenomenon as an evolutionary successful form of ideas aiding in the health and flourishing of the Mormon People. Once one opens their eyes to this evolutionary fitness view, it moves one further away from anti-Mormonism and more towards a respect of their Mormon heritage.

They then discuss the importance of religious ideas and how they have the ability to reproduce the species successfully. They point out that, in my own words, from the perspective of Life what is actually true is that which lives and grows. So that from an evolutionary perspective the only "truth" is that which evolves the newest forms successfully. Otherwise there is nothing, no form, to call truth to begin with. So from this perspective, Mormonism is true as an adaptable form of ideas because it is a proven theological system for reproducing the species. 

At 45 minutes, Jonathan Streeter then has an epiphany, realizing that when he became an exmormon and felt that he was "escaping the prison of Mormonism" at 39 years old, he had not fully realized that he was looking at Mormonism only through an individualist and empirical perspective and not a bio-cultural perspective and how religion empowers cohesion in a family and tribal culture. Very similar to Jonathan, my leaving of the LDS Church around age 25, I had the same perspective as him and it took me also a decade or more to fully realize what I do now.

Venerating your Ancestors 

At 47 minutes, Jonathan Streeter talks as if he had been reading my mind the last few years. As he also talks about the importance of respecting your Mormon Heritage and basically if you have a veneration for your ancestors you're less likely to leave one set of belief propositions for another set, because you are more deeply rooted in the religion due to your ancestral respect. Furthermore, he argues that that the Cultural Heritage is a substrate of a moral foundation which provides the means toward growing an ethical culture. 

His guest agrees and says at 50 minutes that a good example of a group of an "ex-" group opposing tradition is the Chinese revolution trying to overturn their cultural heritage and ethical foundations and it ending in disaster. As he was saying this I thought about how most of exmormon culture has degenerated into self-worship, mean-spirited insult fests, and offering no better worldview alternative except nihilism and wokeism. 

They then give the analogy of Chesterton's fence. Streeter then, at about 53 minutes, argues that the demand for moral perfection from the founders of a religion is ultimately misguided, and what is more important is the ethical norms and cultural guidelines of the overall religion; as it produces nicer and happier people. Because if you base your criteria of judgment of Mormonism on the perfection or imperfection of the founders of that religion, and you find all these "skeletons in their closet," and then you leave Mormonism (or Catholicism or whatever), you will then likely try to find another worldview or cultural system of ideas to live by; but then you are likely going to find similar "skeletons in the closet" of the people who formed those new ideas and philosophical systems. Therefore it is better to evaluate Mormonism on its cultural value and ethical guidelines and norms for producing better and nicer civilized people and functional families. In other words, the founders of the LDS Religion and its current leaders don't need to be morally perfect to find great value Mormonism; just like we can criticize the American Founding Fathers but still realize that America is great and we respect our American Heritage and don't intend to renounce our American citizenship just because this or that Founding Father was morally imperfect or the current political leadership is less than ideal. 

Gene-Culture Coevolution & The Domestication of The Mormon People

In the YouTube video Culture-Gene Interactions: Peter Richerson-Culture-led Gene-culture Coevolution by University of California UUCTV), at 3 minutes the speaker Richerson puts up the slide that says that culture is a form of inheritance and that culture evolves in a Darwinian fashion by descent with modification. He argues that culture can evolve more rapidly than gene pools. Turns out that domestication is actually a good thing, despite Nietzsche's protests that it is "bad" to be a domesticated human animal. But what is wrong with domestication, who wants an undomesticated dog that tears up your furniture, takes a crap in your shoes every morning after peeing on the carpet and attacks every person it comes into contact with causing you legal hassles from the injuries your dog causes. The fact is that without what Haidt calls our hive instincts we would not have been able to form human tribes and flourish into societies and cities and countries, etc. If everyone were selfishly struggling for dominance in the social hierarchy without cooperation and cohesion, we would have just killed each other off and gone extinct as a species! This explains why Mormonism is a positive force of cultural ideas and customs, as it produces nicer people, more civilized people. See my post: Evidence that Mormon's are "Nicer" i.e. More "Christian" than Others. Here are two of the slides summarizing the theory that culture and genes coevolved:

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Evidence that Mormons are "Nicer" i.e. More "Christian" than Others

In the Jolly Heretic's video Why Mormons Are So Nice? he argues that nicer/kinder and more friendly and agreeable people are Mormon and choose LDS culture; while less agreeable and friendly people will choose to not be LDS or leave the LDS Church. He argues that many exmormons are likely less nice and agreeable compared to most Mormons. Here is the transcript provided by YouTube with my editing for ease of reading, starting about 6 minutes (words in bold for emphasis):

... one of the things that people always notice about Mormonism is that the people are so nice. They come across so nice and I wondered what is it, why would they be so nice ... such nice people. Well first of all it seems that they would be expected to be very high in the personality trait of openness. People who are high in openness tend to be trusting, ... in its early stages even when Joseph Smith was alive, Mormonism was highly evangelical and it sent lots and lots of missionaries over to the UK, to Wales, and Ireland and Scotts, and all kinds of port cities to convert people to Mormonism; and there was actually a point where there were considerably more Mormons in the UK than there were in America.

 

.... there's an element to which being trusting and thinking that other people are trusting is a part of being a nice person. So openness, the second thing that tends to predict migration is extraversion. So people that are prepared to take risks but also people who feel positive feelings strongly ... people who have a positive feeling strongly take risks and they take that risk in order to achieve the payoff; if you feel the positive feeling of your food or whatever it is strongly, you'll probably eat more food which is one of the reasons why extroverts tend to get fat and they have a lower life expectancy; but extroverts feel positive feelings strongly, they're amiable people and those would have been the kind of people that would have migrated from the UK. ... they would have been inclined to migrate again up to Utah, so they'll come across as nice people ... but even if they're not actually nice they'll come across as friendly engaging sort of people which Mormons do because they'll be high in extraversion as predicted by their ancestor's tendency to migrate ... remember these traits are somewhere in the region of at least 50% heritable if not perhaps as much as 70%.

 

 So we've got so far people who are high in openness and thus trusting and kind on a certain level ... it's people who are high in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness; agreeableness is about empathy, about being kind to people, about wanting to be nice to people; that is the nature of religious people, there is a clear correlation with religious people who are more nice and Mormons are particularly religious; and there was a survey in I think about 2009 in the USA which asked people how religious they were and of the Mormons it was the highest category that stated they were very religious ... most Mormons in all these categories that said they were very religious. Most people in Utah said they were very religious, 61% I think, it was exceeded only by Mississippi. So they're very religious and this would predict being high in agreeableness, so again a nice person.

 

Then you have to ask, who leaves? And this is quite interesting because a lot of people are leaving Mormonism ... Utah was 75 percent Mormon, in the year 2000 it's now gone down to about 60% Mormon, and among Millennials it seems it's going to be about 44 percent; so it will lose its Mormon majority ... People are leaving the Mormon Church and they may well be leaving the Mormon Church because of the degree to which the Internet allows them to find out things about the Mormon Church ... So you can see how they're more likely to start doubting things and so Mormonism. This raises the question of who stays and who goes. Well we have interesting data on this [... it was] demonstrated that those who leave and those who stay in religious groups in which they're born, they are high in social competence; in other words they are high in agreeableness, those who convert to other religious groups those who have a conversion experience become religious, they are lower in agreeableness than those who are born into the religious group. So those who were born in, there's clearly a degree to which its genetic. Those who are born into it will be very high and agreeableness because they've never even had ancestors recently who weren't religious.

 

Those who aren't from Mormonism or some other religion and convert into it they are relatively high in agreeableness, but they're lower in agreeableness than those who were born into it. Those who are the lowest of all in agreeableness are those who are apostates. They are lower in agreeableness even than those who convert, they are the lowest in agreeableness of all. So it means that those who are coming into Mormonism are going to be relatively high in agreeableness, they're perhaps not as high as those who were born into it but those who are leaving are going to be low, they're gonna be low in agreeableness. In other words, nasty people leave. Every generation just by genetic chance, some Mormons will be born and there'll be not very nice people and those people are going to leave Mormonism. So this will again elevate the degree to which Mormons are nice people.

 

Then we have to look at who has children, now for a long time there was a lot of pressure among the Mormons, really until the 70s to not use contraception at all and a certain degree of that pressure remains. There are these ideas in Mormon teaching that you should have as many children as you can possibly afford, it's God's will for you to have massive families. Mormons are very family-oriented and in that way you can see why the religion would have been adaptive because the genes associated with being a Mormon would have spread throughout the country. In a context in which there is contraception in which contraception is increasingly allowed then we have data on this. ... [those] invested in nurture of course did better at nurture ... as you have to be a nicer person and once you then end up with groups that are competing with other groups then the group that is more internally cooperative but externally hostile [to outsiders and threats], we know from the computer models is the more likely to survive and so this is going to select for people who are basically increasingly nice ... Those are the people that have children because those who don't want to have children are those people that don't want to nurture, they just wanna have sex ... that concept means they can have all the sex they want and they don't have to have children they don't have to nurture ... it's gonna mean that the un-pleasant don't have so many children and the nicer Mormons have more children which will again elevate the level of agreeableness the level of niceness among the Mormons.

 

Another factor that you have in the Mormon Church is the correlation between education level and fertility, you don't get this normally. The more educated a person is the fewer children they tend to have, in Mormonism this is reversed; and it seems that the reason for this is that Mormonism preaches that you need to be self-sufficient, it preaches that you shouldn't rely on anybody else; it preaches that you shouldn't rely on the community and so if you were a genuinely believing Mormon then you will only have as many children as you can afford. In America if you are wealthier and and Mormon you are consequently able to afford more children. You'll want to have more children because God is telling you to have more children and it's considered a blessing from God. So you have this relationship between education and fertility, now what predicts education level or one of those things is intelligence, its IQ, IQ predicts education level at about 0.5 something like that overall education level.

 

Another predictor, it's actually a slightly higher predictor is conscientiousness, so having self-control (being the kind of person doesn't lose their temper and whatever), basically to a degree correlates to being a nice person. So it can be argued that the whole system again will elevate niceness among Mormons, [while] the less nice people as long as they are accepting of the religion and do as the religion dictates will have fewer children.

 

Another issue is people marry people who are genetically similar to them ... they're also psychologically very similar. Consider that ... we've got data on the high heritability of these different personality traits and it's on these that people that marry tend to be more similar. So what this means is they'll tend to get on very well. ... These people who get along really really well have really strong marriages. Now what this will give people at the environmental level of personality is a very safe background, of everything's gonna be okay, a background where you can trust, a background of love, a background that sets you up for a slow life history strategy that sets you up to trust people and be kind and basically just be a nice person.

 

As a Mormon you're not allowed to drink alcohol, you're not allowed to drink coffee, you're not allowed to drink tea, you're not allowed to have sex before marriage and there's so many other strictures, you're expected to tithe, you're expected to give huge amounts of time over to the church. There's lots and lots of social pressure to be extremely cooperative. Indeed it's absolutely fascinating, this will of course select out people who are not you know particularly high in conscientiousness, agreeableness. Though you'd imagine that if they simply wouldn't be able to cope with it they would become Jack Mormons. These are Mormons that are brought up in it but they don't tithe and they don't keep to the rules of the church and so they're not allowed to enter the temple because Mormons have these temples that you can get married in but you're only allowed to go there with a temple recommend which you can only get if you're considered a Mormon in good standing. So that would select out these disagreeable, less "nice" people, it will just remove them. So again it would elevate the degree to which Mormons are these very nice people because you have this signaling based religion.

 

There was some research ... which found some evidence that Mormons can kind of look identical and Mormons as well can identify other Mormons just from the face, a degree to which it would be impossible by chance. Now part of this could be genetic similarity as I said, I mean most of Utah is the most English state in the Union. There would be genetic signals of that and perhaps people would be able to kind of identify it but another factor apparently was the quality of the skin Mormons seem to have nicer skin than non-Mormons, healthier skin than non-Mormons, and so there's a degree to which you can't really fake it, if you drink coffee and drink alcohol in private people will kind of unconsciously know it and you will be kind of treated accordingly. So again this helps to explain and push out people who are less agreeable.

 

Another issue is the issue of what's called group selection ....the group which is more likely to survive is the group that is high in cooperation and impulse control, positive ethnocentrism, ... Mormons are high in positive ethnocentrism ... high ethnocentrism, in much the same way that the Japanese come across as very very nice people, very kind people, a bit suspicious of change, a bit suspicious; but they'll be very nice to you, they'll be very nice to you but if you trigger them to think they're under threat then they will go for you and you see this in the way that the Japanese treated enemy soldiers during World War 2. ...

Here are the sources and the data he draws from:

Sources

Apostate and Convert Personality: [What Drives Apostates and Converters? The Social and Familial Antecedents of Religious Change among Adolescents by Gregory S. Longo and Jungmeen Kim-Spoon]

Religion and Personality: Religion, Personality, and Social Behavior 1st Editionby Vassilis Saroglou  

Hills, P., Francis, L. J., Argyle, M. & Jackson, C. (2004). Primary personality trait correlates of religious practice and orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 36: 61-73.

Who breeds? Slow and Steady Wins the Race: K Positively Predicts Fertility in the USA and Sweden June 2017 Evolutionary Psychological Science 3(2) DOI:10.1007/s40806-016-0077-1.

Blume, M. (2009). The reproductive benefits of religious affiliation. In E. Voland & W. Schiefenhövel (Eds). The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior. New York: Springer. 

Mormon Religiousness: Gallup. (2009): Mormons most conservative major religious group in the US.

Stark, R. (2005). The Rise of Mormonism. New York: Columbia University Press.

From this perspective, LDS culture seems to retain within it the more altruistic “nice” traits, the Christian attributes of civility, kindness and charity, etc.

Also see Jacob Hansen's Is the Church Good? - Fruits of the Gospel, where Hansen relies on several polls and studies showing that LDS culture is a healthy culture and Mormonism is good.

Bullet Point Summary on Why Atheism Leads to Disrespect of Fathers, Dictatorial forms of Communism, & Nihilism

Here is what I've come to realize as of 2024, in a simple Bullet Point structure: 

• God as "Father" symbolizes  fatherhood (as at the very least an archetype) 
• Mary as "mother of God" symbolizes motherhood
• Jesus as the Son symbolizes the ideal son of a father as healer of wounded souls
• This is a family: Father, Mother, Son (as depiced below in an Eastern Orthodox icon)
• Thus to believe in God is to affirm the family unit as the ideal

(Source)

Atheism historically is not just the absence of belief in God but is at its developmental roots, anti-patriarchy:

• The etymology of patriarchy is basically fathers presiding in homes
• Good fathers presiding in homes leads to good (or healthier) children, becoming good citizens which produces a healthier more civil Society

• Atheism ends up attacking not just the "Father God" idea but by extension the father figure and undermines respect for fathers and father led homes by promoting directly or indirectly radical 4th Wave Feminism which is based in "satanic" and occult anti-Male ideology as covered in these books:

Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture. by Per Faxneld

 

Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation Paperback by Rachel Wilson

 

• This "satanic" and occult anti-Male ideology is based on antagonism toward men and fatherhood and it has basically infiltrated much of secular-atheist far-Leftist academia and media, and has morphed into anti-Christian political ideologies and policies; which has incrementally led to the removal of fathers from homes due to the rise of occult feminism and disrespect toward fathers in the culture. The removal of fathers from homes increases poverty and crime, for example most men in prison were raised by single mothers (without fathers in the home).

• Crime and poverty and societal chaos leads to uncertainty and public fear, which causes greater government control and power as the government and its control mechanisms replaces what fatherly theism previously provided through the ideal father and mother and son, and father led homes. 

This in brief is why I've learned that Atheism leads to radical 4th Wave Feminism, dictatorial forms of Communism as psychopathic and dictatoral personalities eventually seek to replace the Universal Father Idea within theism (that grounds belief in respect for fathers). Meanwhile, the turning away from the Universal Father imagery and ideal, and objective morality and ethics (rooted in part in the stability of the two parent family), leads to a psychological orphan effect: that of unconsciously feeling abandoned by the Universe without belief in the universal divine Father to buoy one up psychologically from sinking into a dark abyss of nothingness.

This lack of meaning in life, of an objective ethical Right and Wrong, and a higher purpose, leads to hedonistic selfishness and nihilism. This is why the atheist Bertrand Russell admitted that an honest atheism leads to accepting the state of unyielding despair. 

When you move past adolescent atheism by defining God-belief as "a man in the sky" -- and you become mature and sophisticated in your understanding of the origin of religion and theology -- you begin to realize that to present Jesus as King is to give honor and respect to manly strength and the leadership qualities and characteristics that lead to one becoming a good king or leader. You begin to see that referring to God as a "father," represents the universal Father Figure in general and the protective householder; and so to believe in God, to worship God, is to worship the ideal of the Father Figure, the ideal Householder (the protector and provider), who provides healthy order and structure to a family; which is the best way to produce healthy children that grow up to be good citizens that produce a healthy culture. 

You realize therefore that to worship, or believe in God, is to elevate fatherliness and motherliness to the highest status of respect and honor. To go into a church and see images of the Mother Mary and God as the Father and Jesus as the Son, you have the basic model of a family; and so you have in God belief and God worship, the honoring of and respectfulness toward the family unit. 

So to be the type of atheist that makes fun of religion, rejects "God" and denegrates the Father God, is to join the "satanists," and I don't mean satanist hyperbolically but as a socially psychological label: for modern satanism(s) are ultimately at their core a philosophy of rebellion against the Father Figure, as a philosophy of adolescent selfishness and moral-anarchy as allegorized in the book Lord of the Flies. It is the rejection the Stoic virtues of self-control and win-win synergy and instead it is a philosophy of win-lose and hedonistic selfishness and objectifying others for personal gain. 

So to say you believe in God is to say you believe in not just the ideal family, but as a man it means you believe in yourself as a Man. For, as a man, you biologically feel driven naturally to want to be respected and elevated in status and honored which is what "God" is, the ultimate status symbol of respect and honor, the highest of the highest "leadership roles." To honor God is to therefore honor your own manly drives for territory, status and strength as a protector and provider of your household. Declaring Christ as King is to honor the manly leadership role and "kingly" (householder) status with the woman as the "queen" of the family. 

It is to also believe in the heroic ideal in general, as Christ himself is a model of the hero archetype: as he heroically emptied himself of his ultimate power and status as the Logos, to descend to become a servant-bestower of wisdom and heal people psychologically with a philosophy of unity and joy; which did in fact change society for the better in the last 2,000 years. As belief in God and Christianity has literally changed our moral consciousness for the better and inspired art and literarture, and built cathedrals and universities; and produces good parents and neighborhoods and societies when the ethical principles of Christianity are truly exemplified.

 What has atheism or agnosticism or secularism really offered us that has substantially improved our souls, our culture and society? 

As I see it, Atheism, or the idea that the heavens are empty and thus there is no real accountability nor objective Good or Evil, has directly or indirectly, inspired: Stalin, Pol Pot, Nazis, satanism(s), fourth wave feminism, wokeism, reverse racism, degeneracy, and the decline of Law and Order; with the divorce rates increasing and more fatherless homes, and a rise in selfishness and self-absorption, cynicism, nihilism and philosophical pessimism; resulting in depression and unhappiness from a general sense of existential meaninglesses.  

God belief on the other hand gives one piece of mind and a meaning and purpose in life, resulting in a sense of peace from feeling grounded in a divine Source and lifted up by Hope. 

I think it therefore logically follows that to actively disbelieve in God, and in particular to be antagonistic towards "God belief," and mock faith and ridicule belief is to indirectly attack masculinity and fatherhood in general and by extension it undermines an ultimate meaning in life, an objective morality (as the grounding of law and order), and  removes all sense of hope in something real or "solid," something everlasting.

So that even if one has doubts and questions as to the existence of God, would it not be wise for the person to think deeper about their skepticism, cynicism, or atheism; and consider what impact such beliefs and attitudes has on themselves psychologically and on those around them, and on society at large and on future generations?

Cruciform to Abraform to Modern-forms

 

Continuing from my thesis at the Phases and Strategies of God, what the original priesthood restoration was as I see it is a restoration of what I shall call Abraformity: which means to form your life and purpose in pursuit of what Abraham accomplished, a life of scientific and philosophical understanding, and raising up a righteous seed through your priesthood power (see Abraham 2:11). This was in fact a restoration indeed because in the first century, as I explained on my website here, Roman domination of the Jews had led to a protest theology and a kind of psychological warfare where first century Christians were not to imitate the zealots who used violence to oppose Rome; but were to become what Paul Middleton calls voluntary martyrs, and what some theologians have described as a cruciform mentality. This was the heart of Pauline theology and the gospel of Mark, a mentality of willfully losing your mortal life to gain an immortal life (see Phil. 1:21). Due to this martyr-centrism, there were Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity, and thus there was not an emphasis on building a family and having a wife and generating income through a career and focusing on retirement; nor generating a people that would last for generations, as was the focus of Abraham. For in Paul's mind, all mortal existence was going to be annihilated very soon with the imminent return of Christ. I choose to believe that God utilized Paul's mistake in order to generate an urgency and inspire the early Christians to preach a transvaluation of all pagan values based on Might Makes Right through their willingness to bravely die as martyrs for their theological philosophy of love and compassion; in opposition to the Roman ideal of Might Makes Right. The Christians won the battle of ideas and so the cruciform mentality was a very important and a useful strategy during that first century phase of God's People.

What Joseph Smith did was inaugurate the restitution of all things which was a synthesis of the Old and New Testament strategies and phases combined; which is why he wanted to publish The Book of Mormon and New Testament as one book. The early Christians had succeeded in creating a transvaluation of all morality up to that time by implementing a Zion Ideal with a belief in the intrinsic worth of a person as a soul or a child of God. However, while the cruciform mentality was useful in the first century as a strategy during the phase of God's People being oppressed by a foreign ruler, as the cruciform ideal filtered through the fallible minds of Greek Gentile converts who saw the flesh world as evil compared to the pure Platonic Forms in heaven -- and was filtered through the Desert Fathers and the monastic traditions of men like Augustine -- cruciformity was no longer about protesting the first century Roman government and pagan ideology of the first century; but became an antibody, anti-Life, ascetic mentality of bodily denials; so that it became necessary for a prophet to rise up like unto Moses and move the Christianity away from body despising ideologies and toward affirming bodily life in the new centuries of American democracy. I thus see Joseph Smith providing a fraternal order and pro-body theology during Nauvoo, that would affirm the body and organic life and the family unit; while restoring a more healthy sexuality, affirming reproduction, and the joys of the flesh as good and holy through a restoration of Abraformity. 

This is what the original priesthood and freemasonic temple ritual was, a practical theological ritual order for restoring Abraformity. 

Cruciformity to Abraformity to Modernity

What does all this mean for the modern Catholic and Protestant Christian and Mormon-Christian? For me this means that a modern Christianity is a synthesis of cruciformity and abraformity through either postmarriage relationships or serial monogamy or state sanctioned monogamous marriage, whatever one chooses. The first century model of the cruciform lifestyle is really an impractical lifestyle today as there's no Roman government to crucify you for declaring Jesus is Lord instead of saying Caesar is Lord. 

I believe every Christian is endowed with the power to engage in midrash just as Paul and Joseph did. So to be Abraform in modern times need not include polygamy like Abraham practiced, nor polyamory, but simply can mean the mentality of ascending the ladders of life toward enthronement, while building a family and focusing on the future of your children's children, and building a healthy Peoplehood, a culture based on the ideal of Zion.